What happens in Greece will not stay there. The Prime Minister must act

In the aftermath of the Greek referendum, the threat of instability in the Eurozone reminds us that Britain cannot insulate itself from global economic forces. So we need this week’s Budget to help build a more resilient economy – securing our public finances, productivity and competitiveness.

Tony Blair and Gordon Brown rightly kept us out of the single currency that was supposed to deliver stability - but is currently creating the opposite. Yet we would be naïve to think that disruption on our doorstep will not have consequences at home. In Europe and at the IMF the British Prime Minister and Chancellor should be arguing for a new deal for Greece, including proper restructuring of the Greek economy but also more time and greater debt write-downs. Without this, more austerity is simply going to deliver higher unemployment, lower output, and deeper deficits.

But uncertainty abroad also underscores the importance of securing our position at home.

Before the 2007 global financial crisis hit, Britain’s national debt was less than 40 per cent of GDP. Today it is more than 80 per cent. It will be the work of this, and future, parliaments to get it back to sustainable pre-crisis levels. This is not only so we can withstand external shocks, it is also essential for ending a situation where annual debt interest payments are set to exceed £50bn a year – more taxpayers’ money going to bondholders every year than we pay to the teachers in our schools or the nurses in our hospitals. We must deal with our debt precisely so we can release resources for the public services we believe in and the infrastructure our economy needs.

Labour is committed to this task. But we will need to be clearer than we were at the last election about a timetable for getting the deficit down and set a target for when we would get the national debt back to pre-crisis levels. The approach Labour committed to before the election could have seen debt still above 65 per cent in 2030. We must admit the mistakes of the past, and be clear that while spending on public services did not cause the financial crisis, the deficit that we were running when the shock hit meant we weren't as prepared as we should have been. Andy Burnham understands this, and this is exactly why I am backing him for Leader of the Labour Party. Looking forward, we should commit to run a surplus when the economy is growing at or above its historic average rate, allowing us to bring the debt down more quickly. And the Office for Budget Responsibility should be the independent arbiter of the government’s progress in this.

Getting our debt down as a share of GDP means cutting departmental spending as well as driving efficiency across all our public services. But crucially, it also means building a more productive and inclusive economy, raising earnings and reducing reliance on benefits and tax credits.

Early in the last Parliament, George Osborne promised to “rebalance the economy” with a “march of the makers”. But since then we have seen productivity stagnate, our current account deficit rise to record levels, and a fragile recovery that remains too reliant on household borrowing and which has yet to be felt in many parts of the country.

The underlying weaknesses and imbalances in our economy pose no less a risk to our future stability and prosperity than the unsustainable state of our public finances. We need a Budget that rises to both challenges.

Take social security spending, Labour supports the principle of a benefit cap to ensure our welfare system is fair, affordable and rewards hard work. But to make significant savings from social security we need a Budget to create more productive, high skilled, better paid jobs. Without this, cutting away support for low-paid workers, as this government plans, risks weakening work incentives and deepening the division and disadvantage that prevent us making the most of our country’s potential.

Now is not the time to be timid, now is the time to be bold and so on Wednesday, the Chancellor should announce an increase in the minimum wage. And with five million people paid less than living wage, there should be tax breaks for firms who will pay the living wage, better use of government procurement and a requirement on companies to report on whether they pay the living wage so consumers can vote with their purses and wallets.

And crucially, this week's budget needs to back the entrepreneurs and employers who create jobs – rewarding innovation and investment, improving access to finance, and doing what it takes to secure the research base, skilled workforce and world class infrastructure businesses need.

With a focus on economic credibility, constructive engagement with business and a bold plan for technical education and skills, Andy has shown that he gets this - and the need for Labour to lead the debate over Britain’s economic future.

That’s why I am pleased to be co-chairing Andy's Business Panel which launched last week alongside Graham Cole, chair of Augusta Westland, and Shabir Randeree, Chair of DCD group. This week the panel met for the first time to start the conversation in which we will work to engage businesses of all shapes and sizes throughout the country – so that Labour can best understand what businesses need to create the jobs and opportunities to grow our economy.

Dealing decisively with the deficit and the debt are essential to good economic management, but so is a strategy to raise the productivity of our workforce and the competitiveness of our businesses. If this week’s budget does not rise to this twin challenge, we in the Labour Party must show that we can.

MP Michelle Thomson's full speech on rape at 14: "I am a survivor"

On Thursday, the independent MP for Edinburgh West Michelle Thomson used a debate marking the UN’s International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women to describe her own experience of rape. Thomson, 51, said she wanted to break the taboo among her generation about speaking about the subject.

MPs listening were visibly moved by the speech, and afterwards Thomson tweeted she was "overwhelmed" by the response.

Here is her speech in full:

I am going to relay an event that happened to me many years ago. I want to give a very personal perspective to help people, both in this place and outside, understand one element of sexual violence against women.

When I was 14, I was raped. As is common, it was by somebody who was known to me. He had offered to walk me home from a youth event. In those days, everybody walked everywhere - it was quite common. It was early evening. It was not dark. I was wearing— I am imagining and guessing—jeans and a sweatshirt. I knew my way around where I lived - I was very comfortable - and we went a slightly differently way, but I did not think anything of it. He told me that he wanted to show me something in a wooded area. At that point, I must admit that I was alarmed. I did have a warning bell, but I overrode that warning bell because I knew him and, therefore, there was a level of trust in place. To be honest, looking back at that point, I do not think I knew what rape was. It was not something that was talked about. My mother never talked to me about it, and I did not hear other girls or women talking about it.

It was mercifully quick and I remember first of all feeling surprise, then fear, then horror as I realised that I quite simply could not escape, because obviously he was stronger than me. There was no sense, even initially, of any sexual desire from him, which, looking back again, I suppose I find odd. My senses were absolutely numbed, and thinking about it now, 37 years later, I cannot remember hearing anything when I replay it in my mind. As a former professional musician who is very auditory, I find that quite telling. I now understand that your subconscious brain—not your conscious brain—decides on your behalf how you should respond: whether you take flight, whether you fight or whether you freeze. And I froze, I must be honest.

Afterwards I walked home alone. I was crying, I was cold and I was shivering. I now realise, of course, that that was the shock response. I did not tell my mother. I did not tell my father. I did not tell my friends. And I did not tell the police. I bottled it all up inside me. I hoped briefly—and appallingly—that I might be pregnant so that that would force a situation to help me control it. Of course, without support, the capacity and resources that I had within me to process it were very limited.

I was very ashamed. I was ashamed that I had “allowed this to happen to me”. I had a whole range of internal conversations: “I should have known. Why did I go that way? Why did I walk home with him? Why didn’t I understand the danger? I deserved it because I was too this, too that.” I felt that I was spoiled and impure, and I really felt revulsion towards myself.

Of course, I detached from the child that I had been up until then. Although in reality, at the age of 14, that was probably the start of my sexual awakening, at that time, remembering back, sex was “something that men did to women”, and perhaps this incident reinforced that early belief.​
I briefly sought favour elsewhere and I now understand that even a brief period of hypersexuality is about trying to make sense of an incident and reframing the most intimate of acts. My oldest friends, with whom I am still friends, must have sensed a change in me, but because I never told them they did not know of the cause. I allowed myself to drift away from them for quite a few years. Indeed, I found myself taking time off school and staying at home on my own, listening to music and reading and so on.

I did have a boyfriend in the later years of school and he was very supportive when I told him about it, but I could not make sense of my response - and it is my response that gives weight to the event. I carried that guilt, anger, fear, sadness and bitterness for years.

When I got married 12 years later, I felt that I had a duty tell my husband. I wanted him to understand why there was this swaddled kernel of extreme emotion at the very heart of me, which I knew he could sense. But for many years I simply could not say the words without crying—I could not say the words. It was only in my mid-40s that I took some steps to go and get help.

It had a huge effect on me and it fundamentally - and fatally - undermined my self-esteem, my confidence and my sense of self-worth. Despite this, I am blessed in my life: I have been happily married for 25 years. But if this was the effect of one small, albeit significant, event in my life stage, how must it be for those women who are carrying it on a day-by-day basis?

I thought carefully about whether I should speak about this today, and it was people’s intake of breath and the comment, “What? You’re going to talk about this?”, that motivated me to do it, because there is still a taboo about sharing this kind of information. Certainly for people of my generation, it is truly shocking to talk in public about this sort of thing.

As has been said, rape does not just affect the woman; it affects the family as well. Before my mother died early of cancer, I really wanted to tell her, but I could not bring myself to do it. I have a daughter and if something happened to her and she could not share it with me, I would be appalled. It was possibly cowardly, but it was an act of love that meant that I protected my mother.

As an adult, of course I now know that rape is not about sex at all - it is all about power and control, and it is a crime of violence. I still pick up on when the myths of rape are perpetuated form a male perspective: “Surely you could have fought him off. Did you scream loudly enough?” And the suggestion by some men that a woman is giving subtle hints or is making it up is outrageous. Those assumptions put the woman at the heart of cause, when she should be at the heart of effect. A rape happens when a man makes a decision to hurt someone he feels he can control. Rapes happen because of the rapist, not because of the victim.

We women in our society have to stand up for each other. We have to be courageous. We have to call things out and say where things are wrong. We have to support and nurture our sisters as we do with our sons. Like many women of my age, I have on occasion encountered other aggressive actions towards me, both in business and in politics. But one thing that I realise now is that I am not scared and he was. I am not scared. I am not a victim. I am a survivor.

Julia Rampen is the editor of The Staggers, The New Statesman's online rolling politics blog. She was previously deputy editor at Mirror Money Online and has worked as a financial journalist for several trade magazines.